Fiddle Player

The Fiddle Player is a kids about a boy who goes to a cemetery at night to learn how to play the fiddle.

The young boy had never visited the cemetery at night. Lucas had passed by a few times with his parents, but had never been there alone. A cold wind was blowing through the trees, and the light from the moon cast shadows across the gravestones.

Lucas shivered, but he knew he must stay. That’s what he’d been told by an old woman: “If you want to learn how to fiddle, go to the graveyard alone and practice all night.”

“But don’t be greedy,” she’d whispered, and Lucas had seen fear in her eyes.

He wanted to run home, but he forced himself to sit on a gravestone and tuck his fiddle under his chin. He drew the bow across the strings. The screeching and squawking were unbearable. He stopped for a moment and heard a chorus a frogs croaking in the nearby meadow. “They sound better than I do,” he moaned.

But he took up his fiddle and tried again. This time he hit a few melodious notes. Lucas was so excited that he didn’t notice a whiff of smoke in the air. He practiced hour after hour and the smoke grew thicker and thicker, but Lucas noticed nothing but his music. The screeching and squawking were gone now. Still, he wasn’t satisfied.

“I wish I were the best fiddler in the world,” he shouted.

“You can be,” said a voice from behind his back.

Lucas whirled around, his heart in his throat.

There stood a horrifying figure, dressed in a long black cloak lined with red and smoldering at the hem. His black boots were licked by tongues of flame. And his pointed tail thrashed smoke from side to side. Lucas cringed, for now he knew who’d been teaching him to fiddle that night.

“Give it here,” demanded the devil. And he began to play. His fingers danced over the strings and firmly guided the bow. Songs burst forth, so bewitching the Lucas could think of nothing else. “I didn’t know you could play,” gasped Lucas.

“Play?” snapped the devil. “I invented the fiddle.” And he began a fiery tune. His fingers moved in a blur.

“I’d give anything to play like that,” Lucas cried.

An evil grin spread across the devil’s face. “Even your soul?”

Lucas felt the hot breath of the devil upon him. He drew back, shuddering. But then the devil resumed playing. “You can keep your soul until you die,” said the devil, “then it’s mine.” He played so passionately that Lucas began to clap his hands and stomp his feet.

“Where can you find a better deal?” asked the devil.

So Lucas agreed to sell his soul, his fears swept aside by the devil’s music.

But he could hardly stand doing what the devil demanded next.

“To seal our pact, you must swallow my spit!”

“I can’t,” said Lucas.

“You don’t want to be the world’s best fiddler?

“I do,” said Lucas, and he squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed. The devil’s spit was hot and sulfurous. Lucas could feel it burning all the way down to his stomach. He thought he was going to be sick But then the devil handed Lucas his fiddle, and all seemed well.

A flaming hole opened in the ground, and the gleeful prince of darkness sank from sight, sucking the smoke down with him.

Lucas fiddled and danced all the way home.

From that night on, no one could get enough of Lucas’s music fiddling. He made that fiddle laugh and sing. And when he played for partied, everyone danced until the rooster’s crow. He played up river and down, over the hill and through the valleys. He never tired of playing.

When Lucas was young, his fiddle sang with joy, but as he grew older, sadness crept in. The thought of spending eternity in the devil’s realm preyed upon his mind. So Lucas began to scheme. He had to think of a way to outwit the devil.

One moonlit night, Lucas had an idea. He jumped out of bed and raced out to the cemetery. The slithering shadows made Lucas wonder if spirits had slipped from their graves. He shuddered, but he sat on the mossy tombstone once more and tucked his fiddle beneath his chin. Then he dragged his bow across the strings, making them screech as the did so long ago.

Just when Lucas thought he couldn’t stand his awful fiddling a moment longer, a fiery hole opened up. And once again the prince of darkness stood before him. Lucas leaped to his feet, trembling, but he continued to play.

“Stop that squawking!” Bellowed the devil. “You are hurting my ears.”

“I can’t,” said Lucas. “this is the best I can do.”

The devil snorted fire and stamped his cloven hooves right through the charred soles of his boots.

“I’m no longer the best fiddler in the world,” Lucas said, trying to keep his voice from quivering.

“You are!” bellowed the devil. “Try harder!” And he threw thunderbolts so close to Lucas’s head that the curled his hair.

Lucas jumped back, but be made his fiddle screech even worse than before. Gooseflesh crept up his neck, making his hair stand on end. But he looked the devil in the eye. “Our pact is broken.”

“It is not!” screamed the devil, holding his hands over his ears.

“It is,” Said Lucas, scraping his bow across the string once more.

“All right!” the devil snarled. “You can keep your soul on one condition. You must never play the fiddle again.”

“Never play the fiddle again?” Lucas trudged home, sobbing. He put his fiddle in a trunk and closed the lid.

Then he took to his bed, feeling old and weary. He shriveled a little each day and spoke to no one. But when his family gathered around, he made one last request. “I want to hold my fiddle one more time.”

He ran his fingers over the smooth wood and quietly fingered the strings. Then in a rush of unexpected strength, He played a haunting melody.

“Now put it away,” he said. And they did.

But before he could sink back on his pillow, terror overtook him. He tried to shilled his eyes from something no one else could see. A bolt of lightning hit. It blinded everyone around him When they recovered their sight, they couldn’t see anything on the bed except scorched sheets.

Ad when they looked for the fiddle, they saw a smoking hole in the lid of the trunk and nothing inside.